CNN's Abby Phillip falsely claims Mamdani 'never said anything about confiscating property'

CNN's Abby Phillip has falsely claimed that socialist New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has "never said anything about confiscating property," when the soon-to-be mayor has spoken about talking points such as "seizing the means of production."

Phillip made the comment on a CNN panel when one member spoke about how Mamdani has talked about wanting to confiscate people's property.

Guest Brianna Lyman was speaking to the panel, when she said, "Mamdani's principles are fundamentally hostile to the founding principles... His idea that we should confiscate property, John Locke, the founders, who are very clear that property rights together–"

She was cut off by others on the panel, with Phillip falsely claiming that Mamdani has "never said anything about confiscating property."

The clip went viral after Lyman shared it over the weekend, also quoting a post from Mamdani in 2020 that called for the "oligarchs" to have their properties seized.

"The oligarchs who want us to return to work to goose the stock market are the same ones with thousands of luxury condos as investment properties, sitting empty while NYers die on the streets & in shelters. Seize these properties. House the homeless. Enact a #HomesGuarantee," Mamdani wrote at the time.

However, his mayoral campaign policies also included points for the pushing of confiscating properties if landlords do not pay fines for assessed repairs by the city.

In a previous campaign ad, he said he would take steps to enact such policies on "day one" of entering office. Additionally, in a 2021 video where he was speaking to fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America, he said that they have to be "unapologetic about our socialism" and that one end goal of his was "seizing the means of production," a phrase with Marxist roots referring to confiscating the property of business owners in order to have government-run services.

Although he has not said that he wants to seize any particular grocery store business, Mamdani has said that he will be implementing city-owned grocery stores in the Big Apple, and a report previously found that the policy was based on an accounting error that his team made by taking numbers off the New York City Hall website.